abstract Christine Kuehner

Christine Kuehner (Research Group Longitudinal and Intervention Research, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Central Institute of Mental Health, Mannheim, Germany)

Ambulatory assessment: a new approach to study depressive rumination.

Depressive rumination may be conceptualized as a maladaptive form of self-reflection, denoting the tendency to repetitively and passively focus on negative mood states and their causes and consequences. In this context, rumination has been identified as a core cognitive process that negatively influences development and course of depression. In previous longitudinal studies we showed that a ruminative coping style in response to depressed mood predicted deterioration of depressive symptomatology. Moreover, our previous experimental lab studies have demonstrated that the induction of a ruminative self-focus exacerbated negative mood and dysfunctional thinking and affected the cortisol stress response, while the induction of a mindful self-focus demonstrated beneficial effects. In current studies we integrate different methodological approaches to study characteristics of rumination in depressed and nonclinical samples. Here, we combine the ambulatory assessment of daily life rumination with cortisol activity and with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to be able to more specifically investigate possible brain- and stress-related mechanisms by which rumination exerts its influence on mental health. Another focus is on effects of induced attention foci on emotional, cognitive and endocrinological processes in daily life. The present talk will give an overview of our current work...